Will it go 'round in circles?

Even as a 70-year-old grandmother, Daisy Waring admits she's still learning about herself. This lesson, though, comes at a high price.

Her grandson, Byron Lamar Waring, is on death row for the 2005 Raleigh stabbing death of Lauren Redman.

No one talks about it in her small town of Eutawville, S.C. So she kept her sadness and depression bottled up. She felt alone.

Waring first learned about healing circles while attending a conference in 2007 for those like her. The tradition has been used for centuries to resolve conflict and make important community decisions.

Healing circles have helped Waring so much that she travels to Durham every December for an event sponsored by the Capital Restorative Justice Project.

"It really helped me to grow because I really felt empty," Waring said. "Cried all the time. When I leave them, I have hope that it's going to be all right.

"It's an ongoing thing, but every day it gets better, and I'm learning to cope from it."

Restorative justice to be tried

Accompanied by the applause and cheers of 2,000 people, local court and school officials pledged Monday night to initiate a pilot program in an alternative means of disciplining youths called restorative justice.

The action came at a meeting of Citizens of Louisville Organized and United Together, or CLOUT, an organization of predominantly Louisville churches. CLOUT chose to push the approach as the focus of its annual Nehemiah Action Assembly at the Kentucky International Convention Center in an effort to plug what it called the “school to prison pipeline.”

Restorative justice: A community response when bad things happen

Bad things happen. They did to Katy Hutchison on New Year’s Eve in 1997. Her husband Bob was beaten to death while checking on a party being thrown by their neighbour’s son. It happened in Squamish, a small town just north of Vancouver. A wall of silence grew up around the murder. It was four years before Ryan Aldridge admitted to having delivered the fatal blow, was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to five years in prison.

Katy Hutchison’s response to the tragic event was not “get tough on crime”. She did not see how that approach would build a stronger community. She didn’t want to be re-victimized by the prevailing justice system. Instead, she courageously reached out to Ryan, first through a formal victim/offender reconciliation process, and since, has maintained close contact with Ryan and his family. She wanted healing, and sought it through Restorative Justice. Read Katy and Ryan’s story of forgiveness and restoration.

Clergy sexual abuse: A cry for restorative justice

At this hour, I would guess that some around the world are weary of the news stories of abuse that have rocked the Catholic Church in recent weeks. But to me, it's a reminder of how far we have to go to heal the injuries suffered by the victims (survivors) of abuse.